1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computerized inventory systems, such as hotel reservations systems or other product and/or service reservation or inventory systems, which are used to determine and relay listings of product providers and products and services offered by selected product providers to customers. More particularly, the systems, methods, and computer program products of the present invention relate to determining the order in which product providers are displayed by the computerized inventory system by determining a performance factor for each product provider and using the performance factor to assign a display rank to each product provider.
2. Description of Related Art
Many of today's products and services are catalogued in computerized reservation or inventory systems. These systems may include simple or complex methodologies for maintaining inventory and providing product and/or service availability information. Either via direct access or remote access across a network, consumers can run queries and view product availability information for selected products and/or services, as well as purchase or reserve such items. Product availability information is often displayed via a listing of product providers (such as hotels) offering products meeting the query requirements. One example of such systems is a computerized reservation system (CRS). A CRS provides a communications network for travel agents and other consumers to access travel related information such as airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, event tickets, leisure activities, etc. CRS systems have been in existence for a long period of time. Some of the current CRS systems are known or referred to under the following trade names and services marks: SABRE, AMADEUS, WORLDSPAN, SYSTEM ONE, APOLLO, GEMINI, GALILEO, and AXESS.
Consumer interaction with such systems has become more complex in recent years, thus introducing a host of technical problems related to the tracking of trends in transactions occurring via search systems that may be in communication with one or more CRS entities, a plurality of users, and individual product providers. Users may now interrogate multiple CRS entities via websites hosted by search systems that are configured to search for low-cost product options on a variety of CRS systems. For example, there exists a search system configured to provide a plurality of low airline fare prices and different flight itinerary options from various CRS entities for a given departure and return date combination entered by a user, thereby allowing a user to view these different options and make a determination as to which fare and flight itinerary meets their goals. Such a system is described more fully in U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/573,546, filed on May 21, 2004, entitled, Systems, Methods, and Computer Program Products for Searching and Displaying Low Cost Product Availability Information for a Given Departure-Return Date Combination or Range of Departure-Return Date Combinations; the contents of which are incorporated herein. Such systems may also allow the user to search alternate computerized reservation systems hosted by individual hotels, hotel chains, airlines, or other product providers such that the user may initiate a variety of different transactions with one or more product providers via the search system.
Conventional search systems may provide a listing of product providers (such as hotels, car rental companies and airlines, for example) in response to a user input. Such listings often appear on a display in communication with a user's personal computer or other computer device that is in communication with the search system via a network such as the internet. The display order of such listings often determines which product provider is selected by the user. For example, if several product providers offer a product at a similar price, a user may often select a product provider that is listed nearest the beginning of the list (or on the first page of a multi-page web-page listing) provided by the search system. Search systems providing such listings of product providers generate revenue by either: (1) collecting commissions from product providers on product transactions between users and the product providers that are hosted by the search system, or (2) selling products provided by a product provider via the search system that have been consigned and/or purchased from the product provider at a discount. Thus, it would be advantageous to the operators of a search system to encourage users to initiate transactions with product providers that are popular, profitable, prompt in remitting commission payments to the operators of the search system, and/or provide a more substantial discount when selling product inventory directly to the search system operator for resale to users.
While conventional search systems may determine a ranking or display order for product providers offering a selected product based primarily on price (such that the lowest-cost providers are listed first), such systems do not include a system for compiling data sets corresponding to the relative popularity of different product providers that are listed via the search system or data related to commissions collected from various product providers. Such data may be indicative of the product provider's profitability for the search system. In addition, conventional search systems do not include a system for compiling data sets corresponding to the profitability of utilizing a particular product provider, wherein profitability may be linked to a commission and/or profits from re-selling products that have been consigned and/or purchased from the product providers at a discount. Conventional search systems do not include a system for compiling product provider popularity and profitability data in order to subsequently determine a display ranking for product providers displayed via the search system in response to a user inquiry. Thus, popular and/or profitable product providers may be displayed mid-listing or near the end of a listing generated by a conventional search system if the price of the products provided by such providers are not the least expensive to the user.
This technical problem associated with conventional search systems is especially apparent to the operators of the search system who may wish to encourage transactions between users and product providers that yield the greatest and/or most reliable profit stream. In addition, conventional search systems present additional technical problems to their operators in that they include no operator control provisions such that the operator of the search system may place one or more selected product providers near the beginning of a display listing in response to a user query. For example, in conventional search systems an operator would not be easily able to place a preferred product provider (such as a new provider in need of publicity or exposure to the users of the search system) near the beginning of a display listing in response to a user query.
Therefore, there exists a need for an improved system to solve the technical problems outlined above that are associated with conventional search systems. More particularly, there exists a need for a system configured to be capable of collecting data related to both transactions occuring between users and product providers via a product source system as well as transactions (such as commission payments) occuring between product providers and the operator of the product source system. In addition, there exists a need for a system that is capable of determining a ranking of product providers based upon such data and subsequently generating a display order of product providers based upon the determined ranking. Finally, there also exists a need for a system of the type outlined above that may also incorporate the preferences of the operator of the source system with the collected data to determine the ranking of product providers such that the operator of the system may choose to assign a preferred display position to one or more product providers.